The invention relates to creating and editing computer-readable electronic documents, and more particularly to creating and editing domain-specific documents including a report, such as a financial statement.
Reports can be used to summarize, organize, calculate, and analyze data. For example, financial data or sales data can be summarized by one or more financial or sales reports that represent different aspects of the condition or operation of a business entity. To create a financial statement or a sales report, it is often useful to calculate totals, subtotals, averages, counts, or other summaries for different aspects of a business (e.g., total sales for each relevant region, or total sales across regions). Electronic reports are particularly useful because they can be automatically updated when new or different information becomes available. For example, a spreadsheet program such as Microsoft.RTM. Excel can be used to create a report in the form of an electronic spreadsheet that consists of a matrix of rows and columns for displaying values and text and for calculating values automatically based upon user-defined formulas. An electronic spreadsheet can also be formatted to vary the presentation of information contained within the report. To simplify the creation of an electronic spreadsheet, a spreadsheet program can automatically enter certain information (e.g., the same information, or an incremental series, such as numerals, ordinals, dates, and months) into a range of cells based upon a user's initial entry of information into one or more cells. A user can also insert a formula into a cell for calculating values on the spreadsheet. Values can be entered directly into a formula, or the values in other cells can be used in a formula by including references to the other cells in the formula. Spreadsheet programs typically include many built-in formulas that can be used alone or in combination with other formulas.